Sunday, October 07, 2007

Neil Shyminsky on Morrison's Batman 667-669

[Neil published a smart post in this subject on his blog. Below, I have reprinted the conclusion. Click the quote to go to the full post (not a long one) on his blog. My only quibble would be that I think Morrison wants to revive the league of Batman, wants to show them as not lame -- he just fails for the most part].

2 comments:

I think that the most upsetting thing about this little story for me was that I really wanted to like it. I almost always enjoy the 'Ten Little Indians' styled genre exercise - part of the fun is always in seeing how it'll be twisted or reimagined. And, of course, I love J.H. Williams. But Morrison didn't just go the obvious route - the co-villains are the team founder and the most disagreeable hero - he also cheated by making the real mastermind an off-screen villain. And that sucks.

Morrison's whole Batman run seems to delve wholesale into the "inconsistency of Batman" thing. I half expect to see Gay Batman and Robin pop up soon. The funny thing is that I have long been fascinated by the idea that Batman is so malleable so that he can be all things to all people... but find Morrison's approach to this idea really mediocre and bland. The ONLY thing which gives the last arc any depth whatsoever is William's superb art (esp how he can be realistic and cartoony on the same page to denote theme.) Meanwhile Miller is using the same idea to create ASB&R:TBW which also manages to comment on the original Batman issues from the 40's as well as Comics and Superheroes on the whole.To add in some irony: Miller's book is being derided for being knuckle-headed anti-comicbook hate speech while I'm SURE that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE has lauded Morrison for his Joker issue/novel which was written in prose for no discernable reason other than ego.

About Me

Geoff Klock has a big degree from a fancy-pants university. He wrote some books on superheroes and poetry like 10 years ago. Also essays on film, and TV and teaching. You have Google, right? He spoke at the Met once, and inspired a name of a villain in Matt Fraction's Casanova, which is a really good comic book. He made a crazy mash up of like 200 movie and TV clips quoting Hamlet. Geoff teaches mostly writing, but also Old Brit Lit and Film, at BMCC. He rides a bicycle to get there. He is very good at Facebook?

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Jason Powell has taken on the yeoman's job of doing an issue by issue analysis of Chris Claremont's 17 year Uncanny X-Men run in an effort to make me feel bad for saying Morrison invented all kinds of things he did not in his New X-Men run, and for spelling Claremont "Clairmont" in my superhero book.

Scott McDarmont (Scott91777) is an Instructor Of English at Radford University, Radford VA, an avid reader of books by guys named Chuck, he usually “waits for the trade” on comics unless Frank Miller is somehow involved. He owns more Def Leppard CDs than Bob Dylan CDs and he is ‘Ok’ with this and, while he may answer different publicly, he secretly feels that The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever made. He also feels that there are two kinds of people in the world: Indiana Jones people and John McClane people. He considers himself an Indiana Jones person

Jill Duffy, girl reporter, is a professional writer and editor in New York. She spent five years covering video game development in both San Francisco and London, examining the art, science, and business of the industry, and in 2006 was named one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry. Her work has appeared in The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco, where she was the food section editor, as well as Game Developer, Gamasutra.com, Intelligent Enterprise, DigitalTrends.com, and several other publications. She holds a BA in English from the University at Buffalo. Indeed, she is on the Twitter and also keeps a blog about food.

Andy Bentley is a graphic designer in upstate New York. The first series of Batman movies got him in a comic book store and the DC animated series made him a life long fan. His senior thesis was a short film on the culture of comic books. Animal Man, Starman, and Preacher are among his favorite comic runs. He is an avid toy collector and enjoys playing basketball, mash-ups, karaoke and dark beers. He will be sequestered most of September with The Beatles: Rock Band.